Hell's Kitchen

Hell's Kitchen is a neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan, located along the Hudson River. The name of the neighborhood came from its working-class Irish population, as Davy Crockett once said that the Irishmen of the neighborhood (then known as Clinton) were "too mean to swab Hell's kitchen." As a result of the Great Famine in Ireland, many Irish immigrants came to Hell's Kitchen, forming shanty towns. The crime rate was high, and many Irish boys turned to crime to make money; one of these men was Owney Madden, the infamous boss of the Gopher Gang. The Westies controlled the area for years, but gentrification in the 1980s led to the characteristics of the neighborhood changing; the introduction of the RICO laws in 1986 led to the fall of the Westies. In 2010, Hell's Kitchen had a population of 45,884, with 56.4% being white, 6.3% African-American, .2% Native American, 15% Asian, .1% Pacific islander, .4% other, and 2.4% mixed race; 19.3% of the inhabitants of Hell's Kitchen were Hispanics.